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I'm Coming Up Man-Sized....
2004-10-07 5:42 p.m.

Those would be the words of one Ms. PJ Harvey, whom Steve and I had the pleasure of seeing live last night at the Hammerstein Ballroom with Nicole, Thomas, George and TJ.

I was all shivers and goosebumps when she roared out "Rid of Me", and I was all sullen and contemplative when she moaned through "It's You". From her punk riffs to her hauntingly choral near-arias, she put on one helluva show, and we were all tuckered from dancing so much through the two encores.

And as if that weren't enough, one Ms. Kim Gordon, of Sonic Youth, walked right past me during the last encore, politely saying "Excuse me, hon" whilst stepping on my foot. I'm not easily star-struck (well, Ok, I am, but let's just pretend for a moment I'm not), but with the Disney canned teen machine proliferating, delivering as "music artists" nothing but stepford girls who don't even know how to read music but look cute in low slung jeans, I was really desperate to remember that women do indeed rock, and have for quite some time.

So to see PJ Harvey, and to see Kim Gordon seeing PJ Harvey was fabulous - two women who indeed rock, reminding me that sometimes I just have to turn my head and look at what's coming from the other direction when I feel bombarded with the music industry's equivalent of spam.

Kim Gordon and PJ Harvey both write the majority of their (& their bands') music - and it's sad that such a practice is becoming almost an anomaly in our currently over-processed culture.
They write unapologetically and unabashedly "masculine" songs - full of aggression, heat, passion, and thought; but then at times can be as nurturing, soft, and emotional as our culture expects and would like women to be. To even propose the concept that being female can be so complex (and not 'cause breaking up is hard to do, brittney) speaks volumes about how intelligent these women are, and it just felt so good to be around real, live women who represent that for me.

Nicole very sweetly burned me a copy of PJ Harvey's latest, "Uh huh her", and I listened to it to and from work today. It's dark, but sassy - so I like it.